Content Marketing Killers

Customers care about themselves, not you. Content marketing is not advertising. If it doesn't deliver value, it has no value to your marketing.

Your content should provide clear direction regarding what you want the reader/viewer to do. Use a call to action that maps to your marketing objectivces—every time.

If your C-suite, fellow marketers, or peers don't faithfully join the party, you're doomed.

If you're afraid to take chances with your content, you'll travel down the middle of the road and become roadkill in the noisy media.

You publish too infrequently for fear that everything has to be perfect.

Too many marketers just contribute to the clutter and noise with their content. Aim high and aspire to be the premier voice of authority in your industry.

Your content planning and creation team should comprise experienced strategists, writers, designers and producers. If you don't have them, hire them.

Content marketing efforts backfire when they take place in silos, that is different departments and entities within your company fail to integrate efforts. You need to tell a consistent story.

Enormous problem: marketers think channel before strategy. Joe says "Stop thinking Facebook. Think about the problem you are solving for your customer." Establish where your customer is, what they're doing there and create your content accordingly.

Content marketing is niche marketing. You'll fail trying to be the expert in everything or an overly broad subject. Focus.

Give your story a chance to stick. Don't change it because you are bored. Repetition is good.